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Category Archives: Trance
Sensation White – Amsterdam.
2010, 2011, 2012 – I call those melted days the ‘Holy Trinity’. In your twenties you have carte blanche to do whatever the fuck you want; my modus vivendi was getting absolutely melted at trance events on the continent. Sadly, those days are over, but I do enjoy a wee throwback video from time to time, drinking Peach Schnapps in my living room, swinging a glow stick around like a demented spacker.
As for Amsterdam, it’s a bit of a hovel (too many ruffians, too many bikes) but the Ajax strip is lovely and their stadium permits all manner of chav behaviour in the summer.
Deadmau5 was in Edinburgh.
The Corn Exchange at Chesser isn’t used to grandiose events. The progressive house master did, however, give us locals a two-hour treat, reeling off classics from ‘Longest Road’ to ‘Strobe’. Lots of folk looked like they were on eccies. Sadly, I wasn’t. But I wish I was. Nevertheless, this is the most exciting thing to ever occur at Chesser since a flasher was lifted in the Asda car park a few years back.
Human Traffic – the dark side of nostalgia.
If you mute a movie and it looks infinitely worse then it’s a bad film. I can’t recall who said this but it’s a reasonable proposition. Such is Human Traffic (1999), a truly garish and ugly remnant from the late nineties, a poor man’s Trainspotting (1996) that on a 2018 viewing comes across as a student film cobbled together over a weekend. Like any nostalgic longing, it’s best just consigning these matter to the past where they belong.
In 1999 I thought this was the shit; now it’s just shit, a pilotless, plotless, theme-less advertisement for ecstacy, executed with the craft and subtlety of a sledgehammer and featuring some of the most irritating and insipid ‘characters’ in a British movie ever. I’ll never handle a floppy disk again, and I’ll never watch Human Traffic (1999) again.
Good tunes, though.
Avicii: True Stories.
Tim Berg, a.k.a. Avicii, especially after his ‘sudden’ death, always reminded me of Roy Batty in Blade Runner (1982) by the sheer *supercalifragilisticexpialidociousNESS* of his output coupled with his ridiculous youth, and the fact that he simply … looked like him.
The documentary Avicii: True Stories (2017) is a captivating watch, but mostly for all the wrong reasons. A shy lad reaching optimum capacity, he frequently appears on the verge of complete physical and psychological collapse.
A true artist – not one of these self-aggrandising nincompoops who chucks the moniker around with casual abandon – is more than capable of pushing the envelope to such extremes that the dangers become one of mortality. Avicii, whether one is into so-called ‘EDM’ or not, can be ascribed the term ‘artist’. The tunes are simply awesome, an autodidact’s fantasy.
Now, take me back to the Eurotrip summer of 2011, with Levels the daily opera to all activities.
‘Oh, sometimes. I get a good feeling, yeah ….’
It was all kicking off in Albufeira.
Albufeira in the southern Algarve is more or less a cliche, one of those tourist resorts you see on postcards. There are lots of things for the kids to do, yet mummy and daddy can still get pished and look respectable.
Albufeira was funny. It wasn’t funny in a Jerry Lewis sense or a so-weird-it’s-funny sense. I found it amusing because it’s exactly how I pictured the standard ‘Brits abroad’ retreat. And boy was there a retreat (more on that shortly).
The early flight in and subsequent shuttle from Faro to our cheeky hotel (the Muthu Oura Praia) was the only experience one could deem as ‘fresh’. Booze-free, I envisaged the adventures ahead, and the accompanying snappage.
Mateus.
It kind of descended into carnage shortly afterwards, the sweet taste of Mateus hitting my lips like the forbidden fruit in the garden. It’s not a complete blur from here on in, but days and events I find hard to place linearly. They blend into one another, a jigsaw narrative the result. I was truly reeking on this holiday.
The Balcony.
So much time was spent on here and so much gibberish chat the result. The Balcony is the trip’s ‘Constant’ and centrepiece. It’s suprising how much fun doing nothing can be. I even took a snap of a mop because I thought I was being arty.
Riots.
Hordes of British tourists making a racket and just generally annoying everyone, cops breaking up a brawl by firing rubber bullets and unleashing the batons. From a distance I thought it was Isis. I panicked, bolted into someone’s garden and fell on their rabbit hutch. I arrived back to the hotel four hours later, still steaming, for a nightmarish sleep involving all manner of weaponry. This is the news item here:
http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/riot-police-fire-rubber-bullets-in-albufeira/42374
Vin Diesel.
Is this Vin Diesel? He was in the hotel pool area trying to troubleshoot a malfunctioning umbrella. The Fast and the Furious: Brolly Bantz (2017).
A truly silly little trip this was. Next time I’m wearing a bodycam to piece together a more coherent picture.
Kevin & Perry Go Large (2000) – appalling movie, transcendental tunes.
Kevin & Perry Go Large (2000) – it’s barely a film, more a hotchpotch of childish, pointless, often cringeworthy scenes. It has nothing to say and no reason to exist. The movie is the cinematic equivalent of jizz on a tissue. The music, though. It’s fucking magical. God, those were the days – Ibiza at the turn of the last century, when falling asleep in a pool of your own vomit was considered a trailblazing activity.
The soundtrack to Kevin & Perry Go Large is trance music at its zenith.
Right, time for a bit of Eyeball Paul. Pass the eccies.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 